Ejection Seat

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Q: Now this I'm particularly proud of. You see the gear-stick here? Now if you take the top off, you'll find a little red button. Whatever you do, don't touch it. Bond: And why not? Q: Because if you do, you'll release this section of the roof, and engage and fire the passenger ejector seat. Whoosh!Bond: Ejector seat? You're joking! Q: I never joke about my work, 007.

It should be pointed out that shooting an airman after he or she's ejected is a war crime, though this is a relatively recent idea and wasn't in force until 1977.note This seems counterintuitive, especially since you could still shoot at paratroopers, or a tank crew abandoning their vehicle. The long and short of it was that the airmen are now considered hors de combat, or "outside of the fight" (that is, no longer a combatant) — somewhat justified, as pilots are rarely armed with anything more than a pistol for self-defense, and not trained to be a One-Man Army, at least not without their plane. Plus, if you shot at the enemy's downed airmen, they may start shooting at yours..

Code Geass has ejector seats as a major feature of the Knightmare Frames. In fact, according to the backstory, this trope is the very reason Knightmares exist to begin withnote Britannia looked into putting Ejector Seats in traditional war machines like tanks, but then they added legs so they could escape the battlefield and it kind of snowballed from there. The fact that the Lancelot doesn't have one is made out to be a big deal. Other Knightmare Frames, often of a prototypical/limited production run does not have ejection seats either, such as the Gawain, which is more of a test-bed platform for new technologies, and likewise its derivative unit, Shinkiro. Interestingly, Lancelot Frontier, which is made from Lancelot's old spare parts, does have an ejection seat.

Failsafe Failure is mostly averted, but there are a couple of moments. In one episode, we see a character (Kewell) die when the Guren Mk-II's radiant wave fries his machine's internal computers. In another, Lelouch is badly injured because the seat activates when he doesn't have a clear vector of escape, making it bounce off the ground and nearby objects like a rubber ball; it's frankly quite amazing that he didn't get whiplash. Given a good vector of ejection however, KMF pilot blocks would deploy parachutes to lower its speed and safely set it on the ground.

Mobile Suit Gundam had the Core Fighter, a small aerospace fighter that makes up the cockpit of the Federation's Super Prototypes. The concept returns in a few series, but in some cases (particularly the Victory Gundam and Impulse Gundam) it seems to have been implemented mainly to allow for transformation and replacement of damaged parts rather than as an escape vehicle. The 08th Ms Team depicts a more traditional ejection seat. The second series Zeta gundam does introduce an escape pod which is the spherical cockpit of the mech, however very few people are saved by this system.

The original Gundam's Core Fighter subverts this, since its main purpose is to preserve the Gundam's learning computer and its compiled combat data moreso than it is to protect the pilot.

Gundam Seed meanwhile gives Zaft pilots fightpacks to save themselves with in the event of their suit being disabled (or set to self destruct), but they have to open the cockpit and jump out manually so it's not nearly effective. Earth Federations pilots on the other hand get nothing.

While most Variable Fighters in the earlier Macross series have standard ejection seats, the VF-25 Messiah from Macross Frontier is the first major model where the pilots instead wear exoskeletons/mini-mecha (called EX-Gear) that dock with the cockpit. The pilot can then eject and fly away, even in outer space, using their own self-propelled EX-Gear, which has its own wings, thrusters, and limbs.

Shin is forced to eject at least once in Area 88. One OVA character takes a sadistic glee in shooting down other pilots after they eject.

Axis Powers Hetalia: Italy and Poland both of them used it in different moments. Sadly, they got stuck in a tree immediately after.

Batman: Given its appearance in no fewer than two other media, it is a pretty safe assumption that every iteration of Batmobile has an ejector seat. The same goes for the Batplane/Batwing. One of the Batman vs Predator titles features a borrowed single-pilot police attack helicopter with an ejection seat, which is odd, because there are very few helicopters with ejection seats. There was only one single-pilot attack helicopter produced ever.

In Green Lantern, an airplane went down and Hal Jordan thought that maybe the pilot had forgotten where the lever was. He himself had managed to persuade Kyle Rayner to take a flight — without his ring — and after Kyle had double-checked everything, he had asked how to trigger the ejection seat, and Hal hadn't remembered.

In one comic, Jughead as Captain Hero faces a courteous villain who left his own car via ejection seat, while the car is in motion.

In another comic, Mr. Weatherbee decides to take a break in the shop class, where the students have been constructing pieces of an airplane. We next see Jughead reporting that 'The Bee' has hit the ceiling, and because he sat on an ejector seat, that was Not Hyperbole.

Comic Strips

Star Fox: It appears Arwings have something of a combination between this and the Escape Pod.

Films — Animation

At the beginning of The Incredibles, Mr Incredible uses the ejector seat to get Buddy out of his car.

Yellow Submarine. Ringo is steering the sub as they pass through the Sea of Monsters. Old Fred tells him "Whatever you do, don't touch that button." Of course Ringo does so, and is ejected out of the submarine.

Old Fred:[as Ringo goes flying] That's the panic button.

Films — Live-Action

During the test of the Jet Car, Buckaroo Banzai gets someone Locked Out of the Loop over his radio going "Eject, Buckaroo! Eject!" but Buckaroo refuses and goes on to go through the mountain and into the Eighth Dimension.

Iron Mansaves a pilot who was pursuing him after the pilot is forced to eject. After damage to the fighter jet, the ejection seat is damaged, and the chute won't deploy. Tony uses the armor's strength to pull the lever hard enough to unjam it.

In Stealth, the Love Interest pilot is forced to eject in enemy territory. There's a long scene where she tries to out-fall the debris from her recently destroyed aircraft. When she finally does deploy her chute, the debris slices through it, lights it on fire, and burns it away just a few meters from the trees. She survives with just a few scratches though.

The one in the Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger (described in the page quote) is the front passenger seat, and Bond uses it to remove one of Goldfinger's Mooks from the car.

In Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond uses an ejector to eject an unwanted co-pilot from his stolen fighter jet, downing another plane in the process.

During one scene in GoldenEye, Bond ejects himself and Natalya from a stolen prototype combat helicopter that was rigged to shoot itself with its own missiles. Of course, the ejection mechanism shot out the blades from the top rotor first, for fairly obvious reasons.

In Skyfall, Bond takes the Aston Martin from Goldfinger, complete with gadgets out of a garage so that he and M can escape London. The seat isn't actually used, but Bond does flip up the secret panel on the gear-stick, revealing the red button, as if threatening to eject M. This is Played for Laughs.

In Spectre, Bond is being chased and running out of road, so he ejects himself and lands safely on the street above while the car crashes into the river. He also glances at the gear-stick of the DB5 when Swann is his partner, but proceeds to drive her to their next location.

One of these is discussed in A New Hope during the assault on the Death Star (unfortunately for the pilot, he gets blown up before he has time to eject). The starfighter is designed so that the cockpit and couch would separate from the fuselage and engines, thus leaving the pilot drifting in what was effectively a survival capsule. The suit is air tight and has a small force field that will keep you breathing for about three or four hours. Now being next to a giant moon-sized space station that explodes isn't exactly survivable so it was still a waste of time.

Top Gun shows that ejecting doesn't always help, as Goose smacks into the canopy and breaks his neck. This was a real risk at one time; now the ejection seat in many fighters is designed with a mechanism to shatter the glass before the pilot could hit it in the case that the canopy is not out of the way already. Additionally, the F-14's canopy had a tendency to get sucked into a low-pressure zone directly above the cockpit during ejection.

In Big Game, Oskari and Moore eject themselves from Air Force One cocpit to escape the explosion that's just about to blow submerged Air Force One to bits.

Space Mutiny. the Viper fighter craft, like the one our hero David Ryder flew in, is equipped with a "High-Density Deatomizer Escape System", which only works in short distances. When David's ship malfunctions thanks to Kalgan's sabotage, only David escapes, leaving his poor passenger to die in the crash. As David explains, it's only installed in the cockpit and it was the only thing working.

The Batmobile in The Dark Knight has an unconventional ejector seat which converts into a kickass Bike from hell. Also, in The Dark Knight Rises, Batman manages to eject from his Batpod and control it remotely allowing him to fly it to a safe distance and fake his own death.

Death Race has an ejector seat in the hero's car. The eject was never for the Hero, just the navigator. Assuming it's the same for all the vehicles, it makes sense seeing as how viewers would like to think the ladies don't die. On at least one case, an ejector seat is improvised into a mortar to take out a pursuing car.

Speed Racer has an ejection mechanism that fills the cockpit with foam and then ejects the foam ball with the pilot inside. This allows them to survive such events as crashing into pillars at 300 kph or falling off a track at skyscraper height. They did this to justify the heroes sideswiping cars off cliffs in a kid-friendly movie, not to mention make the whole sport more believable. This didn't save Rex Racer when his "Quick Save" system failed to deploy in a wreck. One of many reasons that his death was considered highly suspicious.

2 Fast 2 Furious features a pair of improvised ejection seats in two cars powered by partially spent N2O cylinders usually used for Nitro Boost. Played with when Brian delays hitting the button because he needs the mook in the seat for a little longer, and again when he presses the button and it doesn't work, opening the way for Roman's Big Damn Heroes moment. By the way this isn't how N20 works.

Parodied in Hot Shots!, where a character successfully ejects... right into another plane. His head is stuck in another pilot's cockpit for a good long while, his arms and legs flailing around uselessly as he begs said pilot "Don't land!"

In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, when Baron Bomburst commands Grandpa to make the eponymous car fly, Grandpa presses a button at random that sends the Baroness shooting skyward out of her seat (she is saved by her Parachute Petticoat).

The original Behind Enemy Lines film shows an ejection sequence in quite a bit of detail: once the handle is pulled, straps pull the pilot and RIO's legs tight against their seats (to avoid anything getting caught on anything), charges go off, igniting the rockets, and when their parachutes pop, the chairs themselves fall away, broadcasting a distress signal back to home base. The pilot is seriously injured from the ejection and the landing, and the RIO is suitably exhausted and has minor injuries himself., but they were flying at relatively slow speeds* Despite trying to dodge a missile, they weren't flying very fast: they were trying to outmanuever it, and the aerial acrobatics required relatively low speed to limit G force.

Literature

The Star Wars Expanded Universe and Legends use this a lot more than the films, so that people can and do survive that way. Sometimes, however, the ejector seat malfunctions, sometimes the canopy doesn't open. Both the successful and the tragic versions happen in the X-Wing Series, both books and comics. With the mag-con field active over their flight suits, pilots can survive for something like ten minutesnote varying by species; Piggy the Gamorrean can last a lot longer before freezing, since Space Is Cold. Most space battles involving a Standard Sci-Fi Fleet include shuttles that fly around rescuing ejected pilots. There is actually a plot in the Darklighter comic which hinges on ejecting◊ in better suits while their modified TIEs get shot down. Averted with the TIE Fighters, which are well known among the Star Wars community for NOT having ejector seats, among other things, which is used as an example of how The Empire doesn't give a fig about its, well, anything. They have reserves. Starfighters of Adumar relates a humorous tale in which a pilot made a crash-landing on a moon in his Y-Wing. He lived, but his ejector seat malfunctioned, launching him with enough force to escape the low gravity. They collected him, but he got saddled with the name "Ejector Darpin". The ejection seats on a gunship are weaponized by Mace Windu in Shatterpoint; to capture the ship, he simply activates the seats with the Force and watches the crew go sailing away.

Averted in The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross, which goes into some detail as to why an ejection seat in a car is an insanely bad idea; when Bob Howard presses the eject button on his Cool Car, the entire car ejects, which is only slightly less so. It's made clear that only time you should press the button is if not pressing it is definitely going to kill you. The explanation also deflates the idea of the "easy eject"; Bob describes how, due to the G-forces involved, the pilot is likely looking at weeks in traction at best.

As in the games on which they're based, the Wing Commander novels occasionally feature ejection seats. In End Run, it's noted that there's a mechanism that's supposed to prevent an ejection while on the carrier, but that has a reputation for not always functioning. Later in the novel it fails for one pilot, smashing him against the landing bay overheadnote for those not familiar with naval terminology, the ceiling.

The War Against the Chtorr. 'Lizard' Tirelli has to eject after the engines on her helicopter gunship are clogged and explode in a dust storm. The rotors and tail are blown off and the fuselage drifts down to the ground on a parachute.

When Wendy Watson flies to rescue The Middle Man, IDA triggers the Middlejet's seat remotely, much to Wendy's horror.

Fighters in Babylon 5 are often equipped with ejector seats (the human Starfuries actually eject the entire cockpit as an Escape Pod), though rescue is a bit of a crapshoot in space, especially if whatever just destroyed your fighter is still shooting in your direction.

Knight Rider: KITT's ejection seats never left the car, they simply catapulted the occupant a couple stories in the air. Which makes less sense.

Get Smart: Maxwell Smart's car occasionally features an ejector seat. You can imagine how well that works.

The MythBusters proved you could, with some difficulty, put a crude ejector seat in a car and trick somebody into sitting on it. They also found that a rocket booster powerful enough to be useful for such a purpose would cookeveryone else in the car. Which is why their ejection seat used pneumatic pressure instead.

In the Stargate-verse, the F-302, being space-worthy fighters, can eject the whole two-place cockpit, as to make sure the pilots can survive in space. Most of other races' mook mobiles, like the Stargate SG-1 Goa'uld's Death Gliders or the Wraith Darts, have no such equipment.

Kamen Rider Ex-Aid has a variation of this: the heroes' Gamer Drivers have a function where, in the event that their Rider Gauge is in danger of running out, they automatically cancel the transformation in order to prevent a Game Over and subsequent Critical Existence Failure. It fails Kiriya, aka. Kamen Rider Lazer, partway through the series as a result of Kuroto / Kamen Rider Genm's Dangerous Zombie Gashat having a jamming function that prevents this failsafe from activating, costing him his life.

Farscape. In "Die Me, Dichotomy", Aeryn Sun ejects from her Prowler after it's damaged, but she's coming down over a frozen lake. Thanks to the retro-rockets it uses instead of a parachute, the seat melts through the ice, and thanks to Jammed Seatbelts, Aeryn can't get free in time.

An episode of Good Eats had Alton ejecting "James Bond" from his bar with an ejection stool, complete with a Shout-Out to the dialog at the top of the page.

Documentary series Pawn Stars had someone try to sell this to the pawn shop. It was appraised as genuine. And they learned it was still functioning and in all the years it had been owned and used as a chair in someone's living room, no one decided to randomly try the eject button.

Played straight, averted, and subverted in several episodes of JAG. Appropriate, as several of the characters on the show are fighter pilots. Even part of the story behind Harm's Disappeared Dad.

Harm: Punching out is the last thing a pilot ever wants to do. People think you get in trouble, pull the magic handle, and float safely to the ground? Every time you punch out you end up an inch shorter.

"Scenes from a Hat" category on Whose Line Is It Anyway?: Things that should come with ejector seats. Wayne Brady hits on the bright idea of pushing down on the buzzer next to Drew. You can pretty much guess how Drew takes that.

This is the whole premise of the British game show, erm... Ejector Seat. Contestants, if they get a question wrong, will be slowly slid backwards in their seats towards the "Danger Zone", and must answer a question correctly to stop themselves. Taking too long will have them be "ejected", which means "eliminated". The contestant's seat tips back and drops them out of the game (literally).

A favorite gimmick for Korean variety shows. Celebrities sit on chairs positioned next to a swimming pool and are given a quiz. Every time a celebrity answers a question wrong, a hydraulic ram flips the chair, launching its occupant into the pool. Some use being ejected as an opportunity to show how acrobatic they are while others are too heavy for the ram to actuate. Both lead to everyone rolling on the floor laughing.

Used for great hilarity in Red Dwarf. In the episode SDRAWKCAB Rimmer is conducting the shuttle pilot exam for new crew member Kryten. He instructs Kryten to start the spacecraft and fly it through the cargo bay doors into space. Kryten presses several buttons, which is then followed by a loud "whooshing" sound as Rimmer's ejector seat actives. Rimmer then does it to himself in "Stoke Me A Clipper".

The eject button is marked as "Bouncy Bubble Beverage Dispenser" or something along those lines.

The presence of an ejector seat was not considered when armour plating was added. (See also, head trauma.)

The seatbelt, if you used it at all, was poorly designed and disconnects as soon as the seat ejects.

And many, many more.

BattleTech has these for its BattleMechs, usually with an automatic trigger in case of an ammo explosion that would otherwise destroy the 'Mech and the pilot with it. In some advanced designs, the entire head assembly comes free, but a plain old ejection after popping the canopy is still the default. It may be worth noting that the setting does canonically feature enemies ruthless enough to specifically gun for MechWarriors forced to do this. Aerospace fighters and conventional planes likewise typically mount ejection seats, though ejecting in high orbit presents some obvious problems for pilot retrieval; many ejected pilots have run out of life support before they could be retrieved.

And most importantly, as in real life, ejecting has a not-insignificant chance to kill or injure (from scrapes and cuts to broken bones to being impaled on a jagged piece of metal).

Some mechs mount full-head ejection systems. Rather than launching the pilot and seat through a blow-out panel in the cockpit, the entire mech's head is blasted off. On the one hand, this means that the pilot has an armored capsule that can protect them from battlefield hazards after they've ejected. On the other hand, the much stronger thrust needed to propel the multi-ton head sufficiently far enough away from the possibly exploding mech to be safe means that there's a much higher risk of the pilot sustaining serious injury.

An option for a Car Wars vehicle, too. It boasted three accessory packages: a hang glider to fly away, a parachute to waft down, or (the 'Mother-in-law special') absolutely nothing, for the Wile E Coyote impersonation scene. No restrictions on vehicle (although helicopters did lose their rotors after ignition request). Fellow Steve Jackson Games product GURPS Vehicles also, naturally, had these.

Video Games

In Critical Mass, if you don't eject before your ship is destroyed, you have Final Death. This is true of most flight-simulation games, unless there is no ejection option.

In Escape Velocity, playing on "Strict Play" mode makes buying an escape pod a wise move. There's an auto-eject option which automatically launches it if your ship is breaking up.

Featured prominently in the Wing Commander series. Ejecting means that you just failed every remaining objective (because your wingman Can't Go On Without You), but it can occasionally be a wise move, especially if you don't like Save Scumming. Ejection in many missions, however, was still a loss. And one Kilrathi ace in particular was known for shooting up ejected pilots. In the cartoon Wing Commander Academy, the ejection was via an enclosed pod, not just one's seat.

The Mech Commander series had ejection as part of the gameplay. Your Mechwarriors would typically successfully eject (with some injury, which was another gameplay mechanic) should their 'Mechs be disabled by anything but destruction of the head. Understandably (as the head contains the cockpit), destruction of the cockpit results in the death of the Mechwarrior. In either case, death of your Mechwarrior would result in him being removed from your roster permanently; a fairly big issue, as Mechwarriors get better with experience and recruited Mechwarriors cost credits and are typically worse than the ones you currently have.

The MechWarrior series has escape pods built into the cockpits of their BattleMechs that gave pilots a chance to survive a losing fight. In some games, they are seemingly powerful enough to get back to orbit under their own power, which is a good bit beyond the normal capabilities of ejection seats in the board game. Traditionally, the "Eject" button is basically a "Suicide" button for when a player gets stuck or crippled in the middle of nowhere, but Mechwarrior Living Legends allows players to bail out (in a full suit of Battlarmor) and continue fighting on foot, though with much weaker weapons (just an anti-infantry gatling gun) than dedicated Battlearmor players. In Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries, ejecting allows you to continue on the campaign at the cost of losing your mech and failing to complete the mission you're currently on, potentially leading to a Non Standard Game Over if you're out of replacement mechs and don't have enough money to buy a new one.

In Operation Flashpoint pilots routinely bail out from their badly damaged helicopters. (It's not ejection in the usual sense of the word, they simply jump out and pull their chutes, but it's still absurd, since they usually go through the still-turning rotors and yet remain unharmed.

Ejection seats play a major role in Faking the Dead at one point in Ace Combat 5. A jammed ejection seat kills Chopper earlier. In one of the missions it's also mentioned that the enemy aces you shot down all punched out. All of them. Somehow. You do fight them again later, and shoot them down again.

Enemy aces in Ace Combat Zero sometimes manage to eject and survive the battle, according to the Assault Records.

During the tutorial mission in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, a QTE requires you to punch certain buttons to after your craft is hit. Failure to do so will end in a Game Over.

Ejection seats play a role in Super Robot Wars games from time to time, usually to explain how someone survived getting a mech shot down.

Used as a continue mechanic for the X-Wing and Tie Fighter series. If near friendly forces when shot down, your pilot can eject and be recovered. If the primary objectives were completed, it would even count as a victory (albeit with a sharp penalty to the final score). However, ejecting near enemy forces would cause your pilot to be captured and interrogated, and the ejection seat system could be damaged, causing your character's actual death instead of ejection.

Veteran pilots in the USA faction of Command & Conquer: Generals automatically bail out when shot down. They can then be assigned permanently to ground vehicles (or parked jets, or helicopters that have landed to repair), upgrading them to the Veteran status earned by the aircraft.

SPY Fox in Dry Cereal uses this trope for the last puzzle. Comically, it's activated by a toaster.

Subverted earlier in the game where Fox steals a truck to chase after the big bad. He sees an "eject" button on the truck's dash and assumes it's for an ejection seat, it was actually just for the cassette deck.

A rather obscure Sega Mega Drive game called MiG-29 Fighter Pilot has an Eject Function. Ejecting before your plane crashes lets you continue the mission as is, but not ejecting will boot you back to the first mission. Amusingly you cannot simply eject without any need or you will be disciplined. This is because you can actually eject at any time, even while your plane is ready for take off, that is to say, seconds after starting a mission.

In Grand Theft Auto V, the P-996 Lazer fighter jet features one, letting you escape easily if you get shot up. However, if you manage to somehow wreck it, but still get to the ground mostly in one piece, the seat likes to fire you backwards into the ground. This hurts. In addition to that, one of the cars Franklin has to steal in one of the missions is a spy car from a movie studio that comes equipped with an ejectable passenger seat. The actress who Franklin accidentally kidnapped found this out the hard way when Franklin pressed the button, not knowing what it would do.

Both the Battle Zone 1998 RTS/FPS and its sequel will automatically engage a powerful ejection system in the Hover Tanks when their hull is crippled, capable of launching a pilot hundreds of meters in the air - and in the sequel, the pilot can then engage a one-use Jet Pack to launch them even further in the air. Ejection is particularly important in the singleplayer, because you're not a Non-Entity General; death is an instant game-over. Battezone II has weapons that seem purpose-built for killing ejected pilots, like the ISDF Pulse Stabber which sends out waves of radiation as it flies that can kill a pilot as he ejects.

Titanfall's titular Mini-Mecha come equipped with these. Triggering it takes a little bit of Button Mashing, and if you fail to activate it in time then you either die when your Titan explodes or when an enemy Titan performs an execution (ripping you out of the cockpit). One of the equippable abilities makes your ejection seat trigger automatically, while also giving you a temporary Invisibility Cloak when it does.

Players are also actively encouraged to fire upon ejecting pilots: one in game challenge explicitly tracks how many pilots you've killed this way.

D.Va uses one of these to escape from her Mini-Mecha in Overwatch, whether she set it to self-destruct of the enemy trashed it. D.Va herself is still a completely valid target, as she can keep shooting while on foot and can summon herself a new MEKA if she survives long enough.

There are two Heroes of the Storm maps using the StarCraft universe where the Core is a huge cannon-based mecha that is piloted by a Terran pilot. When either team destroys a core in these maps, the mecha ejects the pilot and he flies through the air with a "GG" parachute.

While repairing the ''Savage Chicken'' Sam and Helix of Freefall had some fun with the ejection seat. Fortunately the ship's computer was sensible enough to disable it after the second time and they put the ceiling panels back on with duct tape.

Sam: "Explosive bolt error? Why should I care about that?!"''

Helix: (Queries) "Two words, roof pizza."''

In Jix the amnesia that caused Jix to emerge from Remula's consciousness was the result of an attempted ejection while the ceiling of her ship was still closed.

In the DuckTales (1987) episode All Ducks on Deck, Launchpad accidently pushes the ejector seat button in the invisible jet.

During the 1980s, the Moral Guardians were (and still are) all concerned about damaging fragile child minds, so Never Say "Die" was in full effect. This was particularly noticeable on G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Any aerial dogfight between the Joes and Cobra ended up with the loser ejecting and parachuting to safety before their plane was destroyed. This even happened with helicopters, though sometimes due to the pilot simply bailing out, rather than ejecting.

In the episode "Joker's Millions", The Joker is so poor that he could afford only one ejection seat. Boy, was Harley mad!

Batman in Batman: The Brave and the Bold has an ejector seat in the Batplane. He hovered a finger over the button because Plastic Man was getting on his nerves.

The first season finale of Megas XLR features one of these, with the button "Bet You Can't Guess What This Button Does". Next season, there was an "Eject Skippy" button, conveniently anticipating where the annoying kid would be sitting.

An episode of The Smokey Bear Show had one character installing an ejector seat in another character's newly acquired sports car.

Taz-Mania: One gets installed in the family mini-van (without the Devil's knowledge) in "Yet Another Road to Tazmania". Taz is accidentally ejected from the car while Hugh is trying to turn on the air conditioning.

Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet splits the difference and equips the Angel Interceptors with an Escape Pod that can return to Skybase under its own power, handily averting some Fridge Logic about just how they're supposed to get back onboard (its canon cruising altitude is sixty thousand feet, so no helicopters) but if that gets shot down they have this trope to fall back on.

A variation was used at the end of the first act of the Mr. Bogus episode "Bogunda, Bogetta & Bogus", where Bogus activates a switch on the jeep, which causes the jeep to eject Ratty into the air when Ratty starts to sit down in said jeep.

When Wile E. Coyote builds a Weaponized Car to catch the Road Runner in "Sugar and Spies", it includes an ejection seat. You can probably guess how useful this proves to him.

Defied in Code Lyoko in the episode "Guided Missile". XANA hijacks a fighter jet that Jeremie was training for flight on. The pilot radios for two more jets to shoot it down as he and Jeremie eject. But XANA has the ejection lever locked in place, so the only thing left is for a return to the past before XANA can launch the jet's missiles at the factory.

The ending to The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror X" has Bart and Homer on a rocket filled with second-rate celebrities headed straight toward the sun. Rather than deal with their singing, Homer ejects himself and Bart into space, where they explode with a happy sigh.

Bart: Don't worry, Dad, we'll be dead in five minutes.

Homer: NOT FAST ENOUGH!

In Archer episode Training Day, Archer attempts to activate his cars ejector seat but is stopped by Cyril who will be left in the car and be killed either by their pursuer or the now driverless car crashing at high speed.

The Humming bird mecha suits from The Legend of Korra have these. To avoid the potential issue of getting the copilot killed because the pilot left flying, both occupants have independent toggle switches for both seats. Wich sadly makes Hiroshi's Heroic Sacrifice possible.

The M.A.S.K. semi-trailer truck, Rhino, sports a side ejection seat for the passenger side, which was functional in the toy.

Real Life

In real life, 20% of aircraft ejections result in the pilot sustaining career-ending injuries, such as death. Also, 100% of aircraft ejections result in the pilot losing several inches of height, due to the sudden compression of being flung out of your plane at anywhere from 12 to 22 Gs (depending on what ejection seat your plane was equipped with). Most air forces impose a career limit on the number of ejections permissible (and that limit is usually one) before it's desk job city for you. Indeed pilots don't eject at the first hint of trouble, either. Considerable effort is first put into slowing the aircraft because at supersonic or just plain fast speeds the wind the pilot is slamming into could possibly rip the mask off of a pilot's face and ram air down his esophagus, inflating his stomach like a balloon, which makes simply impacting the ground sans parachute sound like a better option. Slowing down to a more reasonable speed to eject into is a good idea, if you can do it. A 200 mph wind is about the fastest nature throws at us. 600 mph is unnatural. The conventional wisdom among pilots is to eject only if not ejecting will kill you.

Note that in one extraordinary case, not only the pilot survived the ejection, but so did the aircraft, as it managed to land sans pilot, and sustained so little damage that it was returned to service. (See here for more details). Even more here Definitely a "Truth is stranger than fiction" moment.

There were also downward firing ejection seats which were fitted due to fears of seats not being fast enough to clear the tailplane of some jets. Naturally this made low altitude ejections a bit of a hazard requiring the pilot to roll his aircraft before ejecting. And when these were replaced by improved seats which fired upwards, they forgot to tell the pilots leading to a few cases where the pilot would correctly roll the aircraft and eject straight into the ground.

Before ejection seats were invented, escaping an aircraft by "bailing out" was even more dangerous. If you were lucky, there was a control that would blast off the canopy with explosive charges. If not, you had to open the canopy yourself, either climb out or roll the aircraft over and fall out, and essentially perform an impromptu skydive. Unlike a normal skydive however, the aircraft is likely to be violently spinning and rapidly losing altitude due to loss of engines, control surfaces, entire wings, or all of the above. If the plane was flying low enough or couldn't be controlled at all, many pilots chose to stay in their planes and die instantly in the crash instead of risk bailing out and dying a slower, more horrible death. At least 50% died on the way out (not counting the ones who didn't make it out at all), and only around a quarter made it back home safely, the rest of the survivors either being taken prisoner or horribly wounded. Early-model Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Bell P-39 Airacobras were notoriously difficult to bail out of because the wind would literally hold the side-folding canopy shut, making it almost impossible to escape the plane. Production Airacobras didn't have sliding canopies, they had doors, but that didn't make them easier to bail out, for a different reason. The relative positions of the cockpit door and the stabilizer effectively made sure that if any pilot taller than a midget would forget to take a fetal position after bailing out, his legs will be broken by a stabilizer, this usually being a career ending injury even if the pilot managed to land on his own territory and was saved by the groung troops. More than a few pilots suffered such a misfortune, the most famous of them being a Soviet ace Boris Glinka (29 victories).

The Lockheed P-38 Lightning, likewise, had a nasty habit of killing or permanently injuring anybody attempting to bail out of it. The plane basically had 2 fuselages, with a boomlike horizontal stabilizer stretching the entire width between them. Bailing out of the cockpit (located in the middle between the 2 fuselages) would likely slam you into the boom, whether you curled into a fetal position or not.

The first generation of fighter jets such as the F-80 Shooting Star and F-84 Thunderjet made ejection seats indispensible. Pilots attempting to bail out now had a very significant chance of being unable to get out of the way before the plane would catch up with them. In fact, on faster airplanes, the slipstream, the layer of air traveling around the plane's body, could actually pull the pilot up against the plane once he left the cockpit (the same problem also applies to things like missiles or bombs, requiring a bit of engineering on how to get them to leave the plane once you dropped them).

While ejection seat designs had been experimented with since 1916, the first practical designs were developed by Heinkel in Germany (1940, while working on a jet fighter prototype) and Saab in Sweden (1941, while developing the Saab 21 twin boom pushing propeller fighter). The Germans employed ejection seats on their experimental jet types (first emergency use, January 1942) and were the earliest to install them on production models. The first aircraft built with ejection seats was the Heinkel He 219, a nightfighter, which had its engines so close to the fuselage that the propeller tips reached within a foot of the cockpit, just aft of the pilot's seat (first combat ejection, April 1944). Another German type needing bangseats, although it never entered production, The was the Dornier Do 335, which had two propellers, one pulling in the front, the other pushing in the rear, just in the right place to mince a pilot (although the ejection sequence had this propeller jettisoned as well).

Spare a thought for the early Soviet VDV, who, lacking cargo aircraft with such bourgeois luxuries as enclosed fuselages, had to deploy like this all the time.◊

Tom Wolfe, in The Right Stuff, descibes a harrowing account Chuck Yeager had with an experimental rocket-powered aircraft, which malfunctioned at a very, very high altitude - he ejected when there was no hope of regaining control, and while airborne was hit by the seat and severely burned on the face and hand by its propellant. He makes it down alive and mobile, but horrifies the young motorist who finds him with his injuriesnote Yeager's face was so badly cut up that doctors had to regularly scrape the scabs off to prevent a criss-cross pattern of scarring and to allow for even healing. One friend who attempted to assist had to quickly leave the room because she couldn't stand the sight..

The American Gemini spacecraft had extra-strong ejection seats that were designed not only to blast the astronaut clear of the spacecraft, but outside the danger zone of a potential launcher fire, and high enough for a parachute to work. They were never used, and would probably have permanently crippled the user. This design was unusual: most manned spacecraft have used a Launch Escape System consisting of a solid fuel rocket in a tower connected to the crew capsule. If the launcher is about to explode or otherwise fail catastrophically, the crew capsule is detached and the LES activated to put it at a safe distance. The LES is typically jettisoned when the spacecraft nears orbit. This has only ever been used once for real, when the two-man crew of Soyuz T-10-1, waiting for a trip to Salyut 7 in 1983, were ejected clear of their launcher just before a fire destroyed it. (In 1975, another Soyuz mission had its capsule ejected while heading for orbit as the third stage was deviating too much, but by then they had already jettisoned the LES and the crew capsule was sent clear by the explosive bolts detaching it from the launcher.)

During an early test of the Gemini ejection sequence, the hatches failed to blow off before the ejection seats slammed into them. Astronaut John Young commented, "A hell of a headache. But a short one."

In a case of ejection by design, Yuri Gagarin, on the world's first manned space flight, actually ejected from his Vostok capsule and landed separately by parachute. This was covered up for many years, as the FAI rules of the time required a pilot to land with his capsule for the flight to count. Gagarin, dressed in a bright orange spacesuit, landed next to a man and his daughter, having to explain he wasn't an alien, he was a fellow Soviet and needed to find a telephone. The soviets kept it a secret that they hadn't figured out how to make the Vostok capsules land survivably and pretended that the cosmonauts usually, with a few exceptions, landed with their spacecraft, when in reality the only way to survive was to eject. The next generation of Soviet spacecraft, the Voskhods, had an improved combination of parachutes and braking rockets that made a soft landing possible. This made the ejection seat unnecessary and a two- or three-man crew could be fitted in the capsule.

The KA-50 Alligator/Black Shark (NATO Reporting Name: Hokum) is probably the first combat helicopter to be fitted with ejection seats. Obviously, with two rotors on top of it, it is very easy to get blended into chunky meat sauce when ejecting, so the design also detonates charges built into the helicopter rotors axles just before the ejection seat activates.

On shooting an airman after he or she's ejected or otherwise left a stricken aircraft being a war crime. This was generally respected in World War II by all sides, even (most of the time) on the Eastern Front. But Polish pilots in the Royal Air Force had to be frequently brought to book for seeking to kill German aircrew who had bailed out - they generally loathed the Germans so much that they considered the fight was not over till the pilot was dead. Some British pilots justified shooting at a bailed-out Luftwaffe pilot with the simple cold calculation that the Germans could quickly replace an aircraft - it took time, money and experience to make a good pilot, and to make sure he was dead would really harm the German war effort, especially if he bailed out where his own side could recover him. This attitude was rare, however, and besides, it is difficult and expends too much ammo to make sure of getting a man hanging under a parachute.

Although during the Battle of Britain, some British pilots thought nothing of shooting down seaplanes tasked with recovering German pilots who came down in the Channel. Derek Robinson fictionalises these varying attitudes in his black comedy of the Battle of Britain, A Piece of Cake.

According to some, however, German pilots were justifiable targets over large areas of water such as the English Channel, because it's hard to grasp just how cold the North Atlantic is during the winter and/or at night, and in fact considerable research was in progress on both sides to improve flight suit insulation to prevent bailed pilots from simply freezing to death.

The Japanese had no such compunctions against such actions, however, and were known to regularly gun down Allied pilots in their chutes. In at least one case, an American fighter came across one such Japanese pilot and, after engaging him in a brief fight, sufficiently crippled the aircraft that the Japanese pilot tried to bail out, but as payback for the helpless aircrew gunned down in their chutes the American fired a warning shot into the wing as he started to climb out of his cockpit. The Japanese pilot got the message, climbed back into his seat, and rode the plane the rest of the way down.

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